


Wild Thing

by Sylvia_Locust



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Transformation, Crack, Gen, Humor, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 20:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvia_Locust/pseuds/Sylvia_Locust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam might be crazy, but he wasn't stupid...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Written for spn_bigpretzel's Gone to the Dogs meme. Also written for h/c bingo prompt body/mindswap.
> 
> Takes place early in s7, probably between 7.4 and 7.5.

Sam Winchester would be the first to admit that he didn't always know where his head was these days. Or up from down, or left from right, or the devil from the deep blue sea.

So he could be excused, perhaps, for not realizing his brother was not his brother for the first several hours he was awake that Friday.

"I'm getting coffee, you want anything?" Sam called to the sleeping form in the other bed. Dean had stretched up from his stomach onto all fours and then slid back onto his legs, in a slow and languid stretch that would not be out of place on a housecat, or a particularly lazy dog.

"O-kay," Sam said as he left the hotel room. Had that been real? He pressed the scar on his palm but the world didn't melt away with the familiar act, so he guessed his brother was just being a little weird today. Make that a little weird _er_. Probably too much Jack after Sam had fallen asleep last night.

When he returned a half hour later Dean was sitting in the middle of his unmade bed, naked as the day he was born, nibbling on his...knuckles?

"Dude!" Sam said. "Put some fucking pants on!"

But Dean ignored him and continued...whatever it was he was doing.

Sam jabbed at his palm more forcefully this time but the world stayed exactly the same.

Hmmm.

"Just...here's some coffee," Sam said, averting his eyes. "And a doughnut. We should get out of here in the next half hour. I'm gonna go grab a shower, so get everything packed."

When Sam emerged from the shower, feeling energized and cleaner than he had in ages, after washing off the residue from that filthy pit of a house they'd been investigating the night before, Dean hadn't moved. Still naked. Still curled up on the bed. Still unpacked. Coffee untouched.

But...had he drunk Sam's creamer? All three of the little plastic tubs?

Weird.

 

Somehow Sam got Dean dressed. His head wasn't completely up his ass, of course, he realized Dean wasn't talking or walking or helping or really, doing anything Dean-like, but it was hardly the first time Dean had awoken with a hangover so incapacitating that Sam had to push him through the start of the day.

And since Dean was clearly in no state to drive it was Sam who pointed them northeast in the direction of Whitefish.

Dean was completely unresponsive to Sam's questions and comments as they drove along, except when Sam placed his hand on Dean's forehead to check his temperature at one point, and then Dean had...growled at him.

Sam surreptitiously jammed a plastic fork into his palm, but Dean was still growly-scowly so this was still real. Strange and disturbing, but real.

Dean never turned on the radio during the drive, and he actually curled up into a ball, head resting against the passenger window, boots tucked up underneath him.

On his baby's leather seats.

If Sam did that?

It might not quite be apocalyptic, but it would be damned close.

 

Around 3 o'clock Sam pulled into a burger place Dean always liked in one of the last little towns before the road to the cabin stretched out empty and desolate. He turned to Dean to ask if he wanted anything but Dean was still fast asleep. Sam wondered again if he'd picked up some kind of bug or something. He could have picked up the fucking bubonic plague from that shithole they were in last night.

He went inside, used the facilities, bought a bag of hamburgers and a couple of sodas, and returned to the car. Dean was awake, looking at him with glittering eyes that didn't quite look human.

He looked pissed.

He looked like a wild animal.

Sam opened the door cautiously and said "Hey, you're up."

Dean snarled at him , grabbed at the bag of burgers, and devoured them, all of them, paper wrappings and everything.

Yeah, Sam was starting to seriously freak out.

 

When he pulled the car up to the cabin and saw a very crabby looking green-eyed cougar waiting by the front door, things started to click.

Sam might be crazy, but he wasn't stupid.

He turned to the Dean-thing next to him, his flesh breaking out in goose bumps. The Dean-thing looked back at him. He--it--didn't seem very interested in Sam, but at least it didn't look like it wanted to rip Sam's throat out. Yet.

Sam opened the car door, tensing at the familiar creak of old metal grinding on metal, and walked slowly towards the cougar. He didn't want to turn his back on the thing in the car, but he didn't think he should show it any fear either.

He approached the large cat carefully and said "Dean?"

The cougar drew back its lips. Even in the form of a giant cat, Sam could tell Dean was irritated with him.

He sat down next to his brother and they both surveyed the Dean-cat in the car. It stumbled out of the passenger side, stretching again, and then it began shucking its clothes.

"Whoops," Sam said. "He keeps doing that. I really don't think he cares much for your fashion sense."

Dean-the-cougar growled at him.

"Yeah, _he_ keeps doing that too," Sam said.

 

***

The whole thing seemed pretty unfair to Sam, not to mention stupid, ridiculous, and asinine. He could only assume Dean felt the same though, because Dean couldn't talk to him.

It wasn't fair because Sam knew Dean really _liked_ animals, even if he didn't get much of a chance to show it. He'd fed scraps to some of the mangier strays hanging around their shabby hotels and rundown trailer parks when they were kids. When he was 15 or so he once spent an entire afternoon methodically cutting holes in the wall of one of their apartments with his Swiss army knife because he could hear a litter of trapped kittens mewling inside.

Okay, maybe he skirted away from dogs a little more often now than he had before they'd, you know, killed him and dragged him off to hell, but he still wasn't _mean_ to them.

But here Dean was being held accountable for a couple of cracks he'd made about how worthless cats were while they were tiptoeing through a piss-soaked _Hoarders_ nightmare of a house. It was so bad the whole floor--really, every flat or flatish surface--was a writhing mass of pulsating fur because of the hundreds of cats and kittens twining around their legs, the couch, the mounds of trash--it really wasn't fair.

"This really isn't fair," Sam said.

The mountain lion lying on the couch in Rufus's cabin gave him a look like Sam would make a nice dinner _and_ dessert and Sam sighed.

"I don't know why you're blaming me. You're the one who pissed off the witch."

He reached back and absently scratched the cougar behind its ears. Cat-Dean purred and Sam said "Don't worry, we'll never speak of this again."

Behind them, the thing that looked like Dean began gnawing at the dirt under his fingernails.

 

"Do you think this is the kind of spell that's gonna wear off on its own?" Sam asked. "Or am I supposed to drive all the way back to Boise to kick crazy cat lady's crazy ass?"

The cougar blinked at him. The thing that looked like Dean ignored him.

Sam sighed again.

Dean was stretched out fully on the couch, and when Sam had tried to sit down Dean had nipped at him.

"Dude, watch it," Sam groused. "Your teeth are like fucking daggers."

Sam slid down to the floor and rested his head on the couch.

"Okay, but this is happening, right?" Sam asked, rubbing his eyes tiredly.

In answer, the cougar leaned over and gently bit at Sam's scar.

"Right. Okay. So how do we fix this?"

"I don't know, I think this look suits your brother," Lucifer said. He was sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of Sam, dealing out a hand of solitaire. "Plus he's a lot less mouthy this way."

Hmm. The devil had a point.

 

Sleeping arrangements were difficult to negotiate. Sam had tried to make Cat-Dean sleep outside on the (very practical, Sam thought) basis that if Dean and the cat switched back during the night, they would want the mountain lion _outside_ the cabin.

Cat-Dean hadn't been persuaded by the logic of that (like Dean was ever persuaded by his logic, Sam thought grumpily) and instead had staked a claim on the lower bunk. Not-Dean had then taken over the empty spot on the couch.

Leaving Sam with the top bunk, like he was 10 years old.

And still a midget.

God, he missed Bobby's place. Fucking leviathans.

 

Sam woke up the next morning wondering if there was any way his brother and the cougar had reset the night before.

He opened one eye, not sure he was ready to face the day in either case.

"Dean?" he asked cautiously.

No answer.

"Cat?"

No answer.

He opened his eyes to find Not-Dean and Cat-Dean gazing up at him.

Well, crap.

When they saw he was awake Cat-Dean moved in front of Not-Dean, presumably to protect some of his dignity. It seemed Not-Dean was no closer to becoming comfortable in clothing.

"Dude," Sam said rolling over and staring at the ceiling. "I really think we have bigger things to worry about than whether I can see your wang. It's not exactly like I haven't seen you naked before."

The cougar growled and didn't move.

"Fine, you can dress him again. Oh right, you can't, because you don't have any _goddamn thumbs_."

The cat hissed.

"Whatever. I need to see about feeding the two of you and I have no idea what you should be eating. Can't you go like, take down a deer or something?"

The cat hissed again.

"Keep that up and I'm going to buy you a collar with a jingly bell on it," Sam muttered as he rolled down off the bunk and went hunting for his jeans. "A pink one."

He pulled on his boots and told them both that he was heading back to town for groceries.

"Try not to kill each other while I'm gone."

 

Sam puzzled over his options as he cooked up a couple of steaks for Not-Dean. Cat-Dean was eating about 20 pounds of raw hamburger, and he was pissed that Not-Dean was getting steak.

"Suck it up," Sam said. "We can't afford to feed you steak. _I'm_ not even eating steak."

The cougar glared at him again and Sam snapped.

"Excuse me for trying to pacify the _wild animal that's wearing your skin!_ " he shouted.

Cat-Dean's ears flattened back but he seemed somewhat mollified. He went back to gobbling down his hamburger, at any rate.

Sam went back to thinking out his options. The problem was, he couldn't leave these two here alone because they weren't really fit to take care of themselves in their current bodies. And he could hardly be expected to go tooling down the road with a 130 lb. cat in the backseat.

Or, knowing Dean, he'd insist on riding shotgun.

He wasn't sure what options that left him with until he finally decided to embrace Occam's Razor and choose the simplest solution.

He stepped out onto the back porch and stared down at the lush woods behind the cabin, bracing himself for a moment, before he pulled out his cell.

"Hello? Is this Marjory Stevens?"

"Who is this?" the old crone asked imperiously.

"I'm Sam Winchester, ma'am. I think you might have turned my brother into a mountain lion?"

At her gales of laughter, Sam thought this probably wasn't going to go well.

"Anyway, we're very sorry we disturbed you the other night, we had some bad information about your house being, er, haunted and, heh , that obviously wasn't the case." _More like infested_ , he thought darkly.

"I heard that, young man!"

_Shit. Fucking psychic witches_.

"That too!"

Sam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. _Think about kittens, think about kittens_ , he told himself.

"Ma'am--Ms. Stevens--is there any way you could turn my brother back? I kind of need him to be a person again."

"I don't think so," she said querulously. "I don't think he's learned his lesson yet."

"He really, he is a good person and he's very kind to animals, honest," Sam said. Unbidden, his mind conjured up the image of how many animal carcasses they'd probably left on America's highways that had gotten caught under their wheels.

"Okay, that wasn't his fault!" Sam said. "We drive like, thousands of miles every week. And he always _tries_ to miss them!"

"I don't want to change him back." She sounded petulant and unreasonable. "He stepped on my Lanie's tail."

_God. How could she possibly tell which was which?_

"You might make a good cougar too, young man," the old lady snapped.

"Okay, I'm sorry, it's just..." he looked around desperately, trying to figure out what would get her back on his side.

"Ma'am? The cougar, I don't think he's very happy wearing my brother's skin. Maybe you could switch them back for the cat's sake?"

She huffed.

"How about for the cougar and, and a sizable donation to the Humane Society?"

"Hah! What's money to a couple of con men and thieves like you two?"

Well, she had him there. He'd been hoping he could just max out a new credit card with the donation and call it a day.

"How about you two volunteer 50 hours--each--to the Humane Society," the old witch countered.

Sam took a deep breath, thinking about the mess of leviathans they had on their hands, and another possible case of a witch working out of a small town in Indiana--not that he was in any hurry to meet up with witches again--before he said "Deal."

"I'm going to hold you to that, young man."

"We'll do it," Sam promised.

From behind him he heard his brother shout "Holy shit!"

"Thanks ma'am. We won't trouble you again."

He headed into the house, where Dean was standing naked on top of the table while the cougar paced restlessly back and forth.

"What the fuck Sammy?" Dean shouted. "What the hell happened here?"

Sam crept along the wall of the cabin towards the screened door, and held it open for the cat.

"I'll tell you about it while we're cleaning up dog crap," Sam sighed.


End file.
